“[Ira Levin] has created the apartment dweller's worst nightmare.”
    —Stephen King

Taking the premise of true "reality TV" to its absolute extreme, Levin's Sliver concerns a tall, narrow 'sliver' apartment building (such as this unrelated example) whose every room has been bugged to transmit a constant live video feed – unbeknownst to its residents.

“Levin, once again, is telling us something in his swift little thriller. That like it or not, and no matter what our ages, we're honorary members of the television generation, a part of an ever-growing cult of voyeurs for whom "life ... the real thing" becomes a spectator sport and watching, in itself, becomes a fatal addiction.”
    —Linda Stewart (Chicago Tribune, 1991)

Levin again foresaw a nascent trend in popular culture – that the intense public appetite for then-emergent "reality TV" might lead to a demand for something akin to "total reality" in the media. And indeed, 24-hour 'news' channels and social media accounts traffic in 'reality'-based, often division-fostering content.

“'Sliver' becomes so irresistible that it will have you phoning in sick.”
    —Thomas M. Disch, Entertainment Weekly

When asked in 1991 by legendary interviewer Larry King how he came up with Sliver's premise, Levin answered: “I thought — where is television going to go — when we get beyond “A Current Affair,” and “Hard Copy,” and... Larry King? We're going to go to total reality.”

Of Sliver's “...stripped-down and efficient” (Stephen King) narrative, Levin said:

“I learned that kind of economy, to get everything down to the essentials, as a playwright. In a theater, if you have an extra line of dialogue, somebody is going to cough. So, you have to keep cutting it down. Besides, in my books, the hero or the heroine is always making some frightening discovery, and if you don't have the step-by-step putting-together of the facts, you are missing, as far as I'm concerned, the best part of the book.”—Associated Press, 1991

• Jonathan Trigell (Introduction, 2014)

• Levin set Sliver in his own real-life Carnegie Hill neighborhood of Manhattan – incorporating many real-life, still-visitable local fixtures by name (Feldman's Housewares, The Corner Bookstore, Murphy's Market, etc.)
• Levin's working title for the novel was "1300 Madison" – an actual address in his neighborhood. (Chosen purely for its sinister numbering – and for no other reason.)